Un Invito alla Preghiera

For me, every painting reflects a deeply personal experience which entails an inward journey. It happens from the deep recesses of my mind, starting with an idea that excites me, and then moving beyond that idea to allow the painting itself to direct its own progress. This was certainly the case with my recent painting entitled *A Call to Prayer.*


During the course of every painting, there are deliberate and spontaneous developments. I watch and listen for the painting to “speak to me.” I tune in for a possible title to arise. I alternate between phases of painting which entail deliberate craftsmanship, and those aspects which are more abstract, in which elements of color relationships and design are intuitively explored apart from the subject matter.

In the case of this painting, I had turned the painting upside down, as I often do, and was doodling on the leaves of the trees. Well aware that the leaf size was too large for the tree, I allowed it to happen anyway. Then I began to add fleshy stems and ribs and color to the leaves. But it wasn’t until I was finished that particular phase of the painting that I realized that I had painted a prayer plant! And although I had already been moving toward a different title for this work, I immediately became aware that I had painted “A Call to Prayer.”

In short, the development of the theme of this painting, and the image of the tree as prayer plant happened without my conscious awareness. As such, it is an “accidental painting.”
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